I knew a vegan a few years ago. He was the definition of a hipster, though my innocence insulated me from such judgments at the time. Anyway, he was vegan, but he wore leather Vans and leather jackets (because he thought the Ramones were the coolest band in the world [yet couldn't even play any of their songs]). I called him out on it one day, and he laughed it off outwardly. It wasn't too long before he decided hot dogs were his favorite food and his straight edge was not cool since everyone he wanted to be like drank PBR.

Hipsters infiltrate everything, but that doesn't make what they infiltrate how they make it seem. True vegan diet is the ultimate righteous path, an example of extreme discipline. But then again who am I to say what's 'true' or not. Perhaps only Buddhist monks and select black metal warriors could know.

It's so weird to hear the word "extreme" used to describe veganism, as if eating abundant fruit and veg while wearing cotton/polyester/synthetics makes a person some kind of ascetic. If you want to see "extreme", visit a slaughterhouse.

I was vegan for several years, and I never ran into the stereotypes discussed here. What I did run into are the typical defensive knee-jerk reactions to veganism discussing naive hipsters and faddists, and hypocrisy over what kind of animal products they use. However veganism doesn't categorically mean that those who follow it fall into these categories. In my experience there have been some well-meaning intelligent people who respect and care about the well-being of animals and want to contribute to this mistreatment and destruction of animals in our food production system as little as possible.

At the end of the day though, and to my point, contributing as little as possible is the best vegans can do. They can never abolish abuse and destruction of animals completely without converting completely to a gatherer living off the grid lifestyle. For those vegans that actually care about animals, I admire their effort to respect them, but just find their efforts to be somewhat misguided and a bit unnatural, hence consuming food, no matter how heavily processed, just because it lacks animal ingredients in it.